Carols by Candlelight
by themicemen
Summary: Bobby takes John to see Carols by Candlelight on Christmas Eve, featuring the lovely city of Melbourne, Australia. AU Bobby/John


This was written a long time ago for the LJ community dryice. It features aspects of the lovely Australian city of Melbourne and a certain televised event on Christmas Eve with a minor cameo role of themicemen and cieltordu somewhere near the start.

* * *

The festivities ended with a roar that throbbed through the thousands there gathered and was gradually soaked up by the trees and the ground. The bats rearranged their wings and shuffled their feet and John and Bobby found themselves in the midst of the migration towards the open gates.

"How did you find that?" asked Bobby as the remainder of the choir finally milled off the stage.

John watched as two girls hurried past them, shivering in the unexpected cold-front of the past few days, clutching their violin cases as battering rams in front of them.

"I can't believe you spent a few hundred bucks on tickets to see carols being sung by a few upstart celebrities."

Bobby smiled. "But it was an experience – I got to see all your famous Australians-"

"Not all," John butted in, "just a few with no overseas tours at this time of year."

There was silence between them but the murmuring of the crowd poured in and filled the space.

"But I did enjoy it," Bobby heard a small voice say, and then in a smaller voice still: "Especially since you were here with me."

Something swelled in his chest and he felt as though he would burst. With a grin pasted from ear to ear, he leant down and kissed John on the lips. Somewhere, someone whistled, and a little girl wearing reindeer horns and fairy wings, holding the hands of her two mothers, beamed up at them like an elf and wished them a merry Christmas.

John didn't feel like going home just yet with only ten minutes left of Christmas Eve, so they took a right turn out of the gates and wandered blindly down towards the Yarra. They passed two mounted police, their horses bedecked in antlers and a glowing Rudolph nose as they themselves sported Santa hats.

"Everyone's in the festive spirit," said Bobby, "it's a pity that it's not snowing."

John jumped the ditch and headed for the shimmering water.

"I'll bet you if it were, you'd freeze the Yarra and take me skating." There was a hint of something in his voice.

Bobby stumbled a little as he landed on the other side of the ditch.

"What do you mean?" he called after John, but there was nothing there but shadows in the dark.

A soft drizzle floated through the air. For the next few minutes until the first strike of the Christmas bells, Bobby searched for John; behind every tree, in every pool of shadow. Only when the rain had changed from a half-arsed attempt at a shower to a continual downpour did Bobby stop to find himself shelter. In the eaves of a stone monument to someone or other, he found John, hair plastered to his head and rain streaming down his face – pseudo tears – eyes half-closed against it all.

"I wasn't hiding," said John, as the bells of St. Paul's Cathedral tolled out the beginning of a new day, "it was only that you couldn't see me."

Twelve chimes, that would have otherwise been lost in the symphony of the city, echoed across the rain-rippled river. Bobby reached for John's hand and tangled their fingers together.

Something unspoken. A new start.

Sometime, the rain had stopped, but John's eyes remained bright in the dim light and the wetness on his cheeks was no mere rain. Bobby brought his hand to his mouth and kissed his fingers.

"If you want," he said and John's eyes burned agreement.

They lay on the grass at the foot of the stone, John's burning heat drying out their clothes and the ground beneath them. Bobby kissed John and John kissed back, their tongues caressing and tasting each other anew. It had been so long. Bobby unzipped John's jacket and reached to pull out the tails of his shirt, his hands spidered up the smoothness of John's back and he shuddered in pleasure as the familiarity of it struck home. But things had changed, only if by a little. While John's shoulder blades were still as prominent as they had been back when they had both been at the Mansion, Bobby remembered how filled out he had looked while with the Brotherhood. There were newer scars now too, or perhaps they were just old ridges on his skin that Bobby had never noticed before. He frowned as his fingers counted more ribs then he would have like to acquaint himself with, and vowed that there would be time later to fix things and right all the wrongs within John's life.

He felt John's laughter against his cheek.

"I'm not a pet you've picked up at the pound, Bobby. You don't have to fix me."

His devious hands found their way into Bobby's pants and surprised him so much that he froze his fingertips on John's nipples. They both hissed through their teeth and John managed to light up his shit-eating smile.

"Anyway, who says there's anything to fix?"

From then on, it was more sweet and tender than John cared to remember, but it was Bobby, which made it all the much better.

Later that morning, they lay on the grassy banks and watched the city's lights flicker and dim as the sky grew to a lighter shade of grey. It was raining again, but John had created a heat bubble around them so that each droplet hissed and evaporated to fall elsewhere.

Bobby was humming, and slowly burst into song as the downpour eased, suddenly, into nothing.

"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know…"

It had started to snow, in a five metre radius around their bodies. John's lighter went _click fwoosh_ and some of the ice disappeared like a snowflake in Hell. As Bobby started on another verse of crooning, John's flame cracked into the air.

"I'll burn you."

But Bobby could hear the smile in his voice.


End file.
